Extracts from Literature
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Extracts from Literature’
Some likened tax-and-spend to a refreshing shower of rain, but for William Cobbett the rain wasn’t falling mainly on the plain man.
William Cobbett castigated the Government for overtaxing employers, and then congratulating themselves on handing out a little welfare to the underpaid and unemployed while pocketing the difference. Better, Cobbett said, to stop the job-killing taxes, so the working man can have a fair crack at dignified independence.
Lord Salisbury seeks to calm the Viceroy of India’s nerves in the face of anti-Russian hysteria.
In 1877, military advisers urged Britain to ready themselves for war against the Russian Empire, citing St Petersburg’s diplomatic ties with Afghanistan, and warning that the Russians ‘could’ invade Turkey or even India. Lord Salisbury, Secretary of State for India, wrote to the Viceroy, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, urging calm.
William Wordsworth watches a playful kitten, and makes himself a promise.
Cats have inspired a great deal of poetic affection, and here William Wordsworth adds his own tribute to our feline friends, drawn from a much longer poem written in 1804. One budding mouser playing with autumn leaves sets Wordsworth thinking about staying young.
Henry Tilney teases a bewildered Catherine Morland for her lazy vocabulary.
Catherine Morland has been invited for a walk near Bath by Eleanor Tilney and her brother, the Revd Henry Tilney. Henry finds Catherine’s artless simplicity irresistible, but cannot help teasing her; and after she praises her favourite novel, ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’, with a tame adjective, Henry is merciless.
American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson praises the English public for still loving freedom, despite their politicians.
American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) saw the English as a people much less biased and belligerent than their political masters. Liberty was safe, Emerson believed, while Englishmen still craved not influence abroad, but independence at home.
Lord Salisbury tells his fellow statesmen that no country should have its laws dictated from abroad.
In 1863, Copenhagen announced the first joint Constitution for Denmark and the Danish King’s duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. Amid rising German nationalism, Prussia demanded the two duchies for the German Confederation, and invaded in February 1864. London hosted a meaningless Conference, and that August the Danes gave in.